(no subject)

[msmidge]

I started reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The writing style is too herky-jerky for me. Is it so awesome that I really should get over it and keep reading, or can I just stop now?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It does smooth out over time. A little. The first chapter is the most Hemmingway-choppy-style, but it's always a little like that.

The question is whether you like the concept, and the style. It's a hard-boiled pulp mystery. If you don't like hard-boiled pulp mysteries, it's not going to do much for you.

Me, I like that genre, and I like Jewish-focused alt-history, and I loved the image of the hardboiled detective hitting a shot of schliowitz, so I was on board from the beginning, and love the book. But if the genre doesn't do it for you, the book isn't going to.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

I think I'm not crazy about the style and I don't know if I like the concept. Being from Southeast Alaska, I get hung up on things like the idea that 3.2 million people would live in Sitka. It's impossible. I know the point of fiction is that it's fiction, but my brain is being a jerk about it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Why is it impossible?

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

Logistically, I don't think there would be a way to get enough supplies into Sitka to support that many people. If its airport and ferry options are like Juneau's (no road options), they're pretty limited. I suppose with 3.2 million people, they would have figured out how to develop those options better than what they are now with 15,000 residents. But then, where would all those people live? You can't build straight up the mountains...avalanches would wipe you out, and bears would eat you. You can't build into the water...it's not nice. So the available space is limited. So my ability to imagine how Sitka could have been built up into such a huge metropolis is a big hang-up in the first 20 pages already. I will have to convince myself that the author has never been there and/or that it's such an alternate universe that it bears almost no relation to actual Sitka.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Lord knows I had no idea of the reality behind it. I don't think that's the point. The point is more like, if Israel had never happened, what would an alternate Jewish reality look like. (Actually I read a review with Michael Chabon in which he said that he was inspired by finding a modern Yiddish phrasebook and wanted to come up with a place that would fit it.)

It's true that the first few pages are rough sledding, especially if you don't have a handle on the yiddishisms, but I found that after a while it grew on me really deeply and came to feel really... profound. Try to stick with it.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

I gave it a few more pages. The jury's still out.

The first time around I was being extra-uncharitable. If he had chosen, say, Yukon Territory instead of Sitka, I wouldn't have had the mental block because I wouldn't have been matching his imagination to an actual landscape.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Sitka's mountains aren't are steep as Juneau's and I think Chabon talks about all the small islands around Sitka being built on. But he captures little details really well. There's one scene later in the book where he's describing the grey sky and the light in the trees which I thought was dead on. And he mentions those ugly green parkas with the orange lining, which made me laugh out loud. And the pie place in the Sitka airport!

Chabon lived in Sitka for about 5-6 months.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

Okay then. :)

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

I loved it, but I think it sort of peters out at the end. The first couple chapters read a bit like Chabon was in love with Raymond Chandler, but I'M in love with Raymond Chandler, so that was OK with me. You might not feel the same.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

I felt like what I have read so far is like reading the Internet: sentences that aren't sentences. His descriptions are more creative than the Internet's for sure, but I guess what I probably want right now as my first venture into fiction in many years is more along the lines of Thomas Wolfe. So, the opposite of this.

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's definitely the kind of writer who likes showing off his cleverness with language, but somehow it doesn't annoy me.

first venture into fiction in many years

Whoa. I hope that reflects genuine disinterest and not the time compromises a person makes by being a student and a mother at the same time.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

It's more about graduate school having made me hate reading because reading = work. Boring work, at that.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

I read all of Look Homeward, Angel and it didn't quite catch me as being all that straightforward. MC's language is very precise after a while and the Chandleresque stuff does wear off as he warms to the Jewish stuff.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

No, the point of Thomas Wolfe is that it's not straightforward. I think if I'm going to bother with fiction I want something more like William Faulkner, but I don't have the energy for Faulkner right now.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Herky-jerky? Hmmm..... I really loved YPU. For many reasons: great writing, solid sticking to the genre's rules, while transcending them for a broader audience, a good story and for writing about Alaska well. I say stick with it, but I'm not sure what your general fiction tastes are.